From The Rector: Assumption 2008

There are some members of our parish community who can remember a time when there was no Solemn Mass here on August 15, the Feast of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary.  It was Donald Garfield, the seventh rector of the parish, who introduced the solemn celebration of the feast to the regular cycle of the parish’s life.  I imagine there were complaints.  Yet, in spite of these challenges and years of August heat, the church is usually full, the music and the Mass glorious, and the fellowship afterwards wonderful.

From The Rector: Primary Things

For several years, and through several curates, your parish priests have kicked around the idea of having an annual liturgical conference at Saint Mary’s.  This spring Matt Mead came into my office with a proposal for a one-day conference for fall 2008.  I knew we could do it if we had the right speaker to get it started.  Bishop Frank Griswold was excited by the idea and agreed to be the keynote speaker for our first conference.  The brochure for the conference is already on the parish webpage and has been mailed to members of the clergy who are on our parish mailing list.  More publicity is planned.  The conference is called “Primary Things.”  It’s not about “smells and bells” but it’s a time for priests to reflect on their ministry as stewards of the sacraments and servants of the assembly.

From Father Mead: If I Were A Mystery Worshipper

There’s a website called “Ship of Fools” that runs a regular feature called the Mystery Worshipper.  A Mystery Worshipper visits a church and evaluates everything that happens from the moment he or she enters until he or she leaves.  At the end of the review the church gets graded (1-10).  Everything matters, all the details count, and surprisingly, personal preferences about things like-high or low-church styles don’t seem to matter as much as you might think.  Recently Saint Mary’s has had two very positive Mystery Worshipper reviews.  Though the many details matter a great deal, most churches score well, as we did, if those details add up to a smooth flowing service and friendly people (both laity and clergy). 

From Father Smith: The Hope of Our Calling

A friend called me early one morning recently and invited me to a performance of the Public Theater’s production of Hamlet in Central Park.  She told me that she was already in the Park, had a good place in line and was sure that she would be able to get us tickets for that evening’s performance.  I was on vacation and was free that evening, so I eagerly accepted her kind offer.  I also thanked her for doing all the work. 

From the Rector: Richness of Tradition

This week I was finally able to read an article that I’ve wanted to see for some time.  It’s by Father Paul Bradshaw, the Anglican liturgist who is professor of theology at the University of Notre Dame.  Its title is “The Eucharistic Sayings of Jesus” (Studia Liturgica 35, 2005, pages 1-11).  Father Bradshaw is a careful and very readable scholar.  He’s very good at taking a fresh look at sources to see what they say, or don’t say, and to see if the sources are actually addressing a particular issue.

From the Rector: Hail and Farewell

This Sunday, July 6, Robert McCormick will conclude his service as organist and music director of the parish.  As you know, he has accepted a position at Saint Paul’s Parish, Washington, D.C.  His first Sunday with us as the parish musician was on July 1, 2001.  It’s been a wonderful seven years in every way.  I am very proud of the work he has done here and I know you join me in wishing him the best in the years to come.

From the Rector: Peter and Paul

This Sunday we celebrate the Feast of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, Apostles.  Most years there are one or two celebrations of a certain rank that parishes can choose to observe in preference to an ordinary Sunday in the Season after Epiphany or the Season after Pentecost.  This year, in addition to Peter and Paul, Holy Cross Day, September 14, falls on a Sunday and we will keep it on Sunday.  We also observe on Sundays the Nativity of John the Baptist (June 24), Assumption (August 15), and Saint Michael and All Angels (September 29) when these feasts fall on Sunday.

From the Rector: Music News

I am delighted to announce that James Kennerley will be interim organist & music director.  His first Sunday will be August 10.  He will play a recital before the Solemn Mass on Friday, August 15.  He is an outstanding young musician.  I could not be happier for all of us.

From the Rector: Daily Mass

In the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, Saint Luke describes the outpouring of the Spirit on the apostles, their first preaching and how those who heard Good News were baptized.  The chapter concludes, “And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they partook of food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people.  And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” (Acts 2:46-57).  It’s too easy and far too common for us to read the present into the past – the apostles were not, for example, the Church’s first “priests” or “bishops.”  Our idea of “breaking bread” – that is, the Mass –

Volume 10, Number 28, June 8, 2008

From the Rector: Full Gospel ChristiansGetting Up For UsThe other day I was in the church listening to organ music while standing across from the third station of the cross which commemorates Jesus falling for the first time.  For whatever reason, I found myself thinking not about Jesus falling but about Jesus getting up for us.  It mattered that he got up and kept going.  It matters too that you and I get up and get going for others and for Jesus.

From the Rector: Getting Up For Us

The other day I was in the church listening to organ music while standing across from the third station of the cross which commemorates Jesus falling for the first time.  For whatever reason, I found myself thinking not about Jesus falling but about Jesus getting up for us.  It mattered that he got up and kept going.  It matters too that you and I get up and get going for others and for Jesus.

From Father Mead: Corpus Christi

The church owes its celebration of Corpus Christi (officially, the Feast of the Most Holy Body of Christ) primarily to the devotional practices of the laity in the midst of the growing theological emphasis in the West on the real presence in the Eucharist during the thirteenth century.  When the Church began to stress the whole and complete real presence of Jesus in the Bread and Wine of the Eucharist, the people reacted by demanding that they be able to see our Lord.  To this we probably owe the elevations during the Mass and the practice of Eucharistic Exposition (displaying the Sacrament for the people).

From the Rector: Trinity at Saint Mary’s

It is to Pope John XXII, a bishop of “Rome” from 1316 until 1334, who never made it to Rome – he was the second pope in Avignon – that we really owe credit for two of the three “theme” feasts that survive across the wider Church, Trinity Sunday and the Feast of the Most Holy Body of Christ, commonly called “Corpus Christi.”  In John XXII’s day, both celebrations had been around for a while, a Mass of the Holy Trinity since the eighth century, Corpus Christi since the thirteenth.  This pope imposed both celebrations on the entire Western Church.

From the Rector: Pentecost & the Unity of Eastertide

When I begin to reflect on or write about the calendar of the Christian Church, it is important for me to remember that before there was an Easter, a Christmas, a Pentecost or anything else, there was Sunday.  Sunday is the original, weekly celebration of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  It is easy to lose sight of the meaning and importance of Sunday for lots of reasons.  But without knowing Sunday as the weekly celebration of Christ’s dying and rising, Christian practice and faith can be overwhelmed by secondary things – the outward signs of ashes and palms come to mind.

From the Rector: Requirements

When I served in Louisiana I knew a retired priest who had come over to the United States years before from the Church of Ireland.  I once interviewed for a position he had held.  He was remembered in that small Louisiana town for many good things, but he was also remembered because he had refused to give out ashes on Ash Wednesday.  Matthew’s gospel says very plainly that we are not to do this, and it was done in his day in the Church of Ireland.  I also remember a priest in Louisiana originally from the evangelical wing of the Church of England.  He simply would not pray for the dead –

From the Rector: Burning the Candle

We manage to use up almost all of our candles one way or another here at Saint Mary’s.  But one candle that has gotten very little use in recent years is the Paschal Candle.  The one we buy is 55 inches tall.  There’s always a lot left over, but not this year.  The candle has been burning, whenever the church has been open, since it was first lit at the beginning of the Great Vigil of Easter.  It will make it through Evensong on Pentecost, the last service of the Easter Season.  There won’t be much left, and that is fine with me.

From the Rector: Music at Saint Mary’s

Robert McCormick has accepted the position of music director and organist at Saint Paul’s Parish, Washington, D.C.  I expect his last Sunday with us to be sometime in July.  Details remain to be worked out about how we will celebrate his work for this parish, but today I want to thank him and to wish him the best in his new position.   He’s done great work here for us, for which I cannot help but be thankful.  I am also thankful that we have a wonderful opportunity to build on all that we as a parish community have done in the past seven and a half years – and in the past 138 years of worship of this extraordinary parish community.

From the Rector: Unexpected Learning

I found myself back on an MRI scanning table last week.  I hadn’t had an MRI since 1995, when I was seriously ill with what turned out to be a brain abscess.  This MRI was to make sure there was no infection in the tissues around one of my ears.  I’m not sure that without my history I would have agreed to the procedure, but with my history, I didn’t object.  The MRI is an easy test, as these things go.  Everything is fine; my body is just getting older.  As I lay there for the exam, it was easy to relax – despite the noise of the magnets.  I found myself very, very thankful for life – and for modern medicine.

From the Rector: Easter Unbound

I’m old enough to remember going to church with my Roman Catholic grandparents when Mass in their church was still celebrated “in a tongue not understanded of the people.”  For whatever reason, just recently this has hit hard in my analytical gut, as it were.  I don’t have the vocation or time to begin to study, think and theorize about the developmental consequences of this for Christianity in Western Europe.  I confess I have never had the urge to read widely or really to study Christianity in Eastern Europe.  My sense is that I am only slightly aware of the consequences for us, today, of the Western Church in Europe being frozen in Latin for so long, before and since the Protestant Reformation.

From the Rector: Easter and Annunciation

On Tuesday, April 1, 2008, the Most Reverend Katharine Jefferts Schori, presiding bishop and primate of the Episcopal Church, will be with us as celebrant and preacher for the Feast of the Annunciation.  I hope very much that many members of the wider parish and diocesan community may be able to be with us.  Robert McCormick will be playing an organ recital at 5:30 PM.  Solemn Pontifical Mass is at 6:00 PM.  A reception in honor of Bishop Jefferts Schori and all of our guests will be held in the parish hall immediately following the service.